Part 1 (1/2)
Asteroid of Fear.
by Raymond Zinke Gallun.
[Sidenote: _All s.p.a.ce was electrified as that harsh challenge rang out ... but John Endlich hesitated. For he saw beyond his own murder--saw the horror and destruction his death would unleash--and knew he dared not fight back!_]
The s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort.
In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was--bitter.
His two kids, Bubs, seven, and Evelyn, nine--clad in s.p.a.ce-suits that were slightly oversize to allow for the growth of young bodies--were both bawling. He could hear them through his oxygen-helmet radiophones.
Around him, under the airless sky of s.p.a.ce, stretched desolation that he'd of course known about beforehand--but which now had a.s.sumed that special and terrible starkness of reality.
At his elbow, his wife, Rose, her heart-shaped face and grey eyes framed by the wide face-window of her armor, was trying desperately to choke back tears, and be brave.
”Remember--we've _got_ to make good here, Johnny,” she was saying.
”Remember what the Homesteaders Office people told us--that with modern equipment and the right frame of mind, life can be nice out here. It's worked on other asteroids. What if we are the first farmers to come to Vesta?... Don't listen to those crazy miners! They're just kidding us!
Don't listen to them! And don't, for gosh sakes, get sore....”
Rose's words were now like dim echoes of his conscience, and of his recent grim determination to master his hot temper, his sensitiveness, his wanderl.u.s.t, and his penchant for poker and the social gla.s.s--qualities of an otherwise agreeable and industrious nature, that, on Earth, had always been his undoing. Recently, back in Illinois, he had even spent six months in jail for all but inflicting murder with his bare fists on a bullying neighbor whom he had caught whipping a horse.
Sure--but during those six months his farm, the fifth he'd tried to run in scattered parts of North America, had gone to weeds in spite of Rose's valiant efforts to take care of it alone....
Oh, yes--the lessons of all that past personal history should be strong in his mind. But now will power and Rose's frightened tones of wisdom both seemed to fade away in his brain, as jeering words from another source continued to drive jagged splinters into the weakest portion of his soul:
”Hi, you hydroponic pun'kin-head!... How yuh like your new claim?...
Nice, ain't it? How about some fresh turnips?... Good luck, yuh greenhorn.... Hiyuh, papa! Tied to baby's diaper suspenders!... Let the poor dope alone, guys.... Snooty.... Won't take our likker, hunh? Won't take our money.... Wifey's boy! Let's make him sociable....
Haw-Haw-haw.... Hydroponic pun'kin-head!...”
It was a medley of coa.r.s.e voices and laughter, matching the row of a dozen coa.r.s.e faces and grins that lined the view-ports of the s.h.i.+p.
These men were asteroid miners, s.p.a.ce-hardened and s.p.a.ce-twisted. They'd been back to Earth for a while, to raise h.e.l.l and freshen up, and spend the money in their then-bulging pockets. Coming out again from Earth, across the orbit of Mars to the asteroid belt, they had had the Endlichs as fellow pa.s.sengers.
John Endlich had battled valiantly with his feebler side, and with his social inclinations, all through that long, dreary voyage, to keep clear of the inevitable griefs that were sure to come to a chap like himself from involvement with such characters. In the main, it had been a rather tattered victory. But now, at the final moment of bleak anticlimax, they took their revenge in guffaws and ridicule, hurling the noise at him through the radiophones of the s.p.a.ce-suit helmets that they held in their laps--s.p.a.ce-suits being always kept handy beneath the traveler-seats of every interplanetary vessel.
”... Haw-haw-haw! Drop over to our camp sometime for a little drink, and a little game, eh, pantywaist? Tain't far. Sure--just drop in on us when the pressure of domesticity in this beootiful country gets you down....
When the turnips get you down! Haw-haw-haw! Bring the wife along....
She's kinda pretty. Ought to have a man-size fella.... Just ask for me--Alf Neely! Haw-haw-haw!”
Yeah, Alf Neely was the loudest and the ugliest of John Endlich's baiters. He had gigantic arms and shoulders, small squinty eyes, and a pendulous nose. ”Haw-haw-haw!...”
And the others, yelling and hooting, made it a pack: ”Man--don't he wish he was back in Podunk!... What!--no tomatas, Dutch?... What did they tell yuh back at the Homestead office in Chicago?--that we were in de-e-esperate need of fresh vegetables out here? Well, where are they, papa?... Haw-haw-haw!...”
Under the barrage John Endlich's last shreds of common-sense were all but blotted out by the red murk of fury. He was small and broad--a stolid-looking thirty-two years old. But now his round and usually placid face was as red as a fiery moon, and his underlip curled in a snarl. He might have taken the savage ribbing more calmly. But there was too much grim fact behind what these asteroid miners said. Besides, out here he had thought that he would have a better chance to lick the weaknesses in himself--because he'd _have_ to work to keep his family alive; because he'd been told that there'd be no one around to distract him from duty. Yah! The irony of that, now, was maddening.
For the moment John Endlich was speechless and strangled--but like an ignited firecracker. Uhunh--ready to explode. His hard body hunched, as if ready to spring. And the baiting waxed louder. It was like the yammering of crows, or the roar of a wild surf in his ears. Then came the last straw. The kids had kept on bawling--more and more violently.